Ooooooooh! Had his picture taken at a rally:
... describing an encounter with then-Sen. Barack Obama after a Miami speech by the presidential candidate. A White House spokesman said, "This is one of hundreds of thousands of photos the president took at events during the campaign."
How utterly *incriminating*! A handshake after a speech. (And printed in the newspaper that Stanford bought and controls.) LOL!
Still... from that WSJ article, it would seem that this ex-billionaire and fifth-generation Texan, (once reported at around the 200th. richest person in America), stayed fairly close-to-home with his political donations.
Texas & CA & FL pols seem high on his list:
...Mr. Stanford and his affiliated companies have spent more than $5 million on lobbying fees since 2000, federal records show. The businessman and his top executives have also contributed at least $2 million to candidates, including key lawmakers, and additional thousands of dollars on jets and resorts. The businessman's primary goal for the last three to four years has been to minimize taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, according to interviews with lobbyists and lobby filings.
... Democratic lobbyist and fund-raiser Ben Barnes of Texas is among Mr. Stanford's roster of advocates, lobbying records show, with $1.125 million in fees over the past two years. ...Mr. Stanford sought unsuccessfully to change the tax rules so that his income from offshore sources would be included in the low tax rates applied to Virgin Islands residents.
... Other top recipients of the Stanford employees' political giving are Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), who received $43,000, and Rep. Pete Sessions (R., Texas), who received $39,000. Mr. Nelson said Tuesday that he would donate the money to charity. On the state level, the largest recipient of Mr. Stanford's help was former California Gov. Gray Davis. The Stanford Financial Group gave $200,000 for his 2002 campaign and another $100,000 to fight his recall by ballot initiative the next year.
Also... looks like most *any* pol having any influence over the taxation of off-shore earned profits! (No surprise there! :-)
Among the recipients of Mr. Stanford's largesse is House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), who has long advocated lenient tax policies toward Virgin Islands residents and in 2007 introduced a bill to enforce a statute of limitations on IRS scrutiny of islanders' old tax returns. That year, Mr. Rangel traveled to Antigua for a development conference partly sponsored by Mr. Stanford, who also donated $28,300 to Mr. Rangel in 2008. "I met Stanford a couple of times," Mr. Rangel said. "He has never discussed any legislative issue with me nor has anyone to my knowledge representing him ever discussed any legislation."
Mr. Stanford wrote two $250,000 checks to the Democratic Party in 2002. He also was a big supporter of New York Democrat Gregory Meeks, a member of a House Financial Services subcommittee dealing with offshore banks that received an estimated $17,600 from a Stanford fund-raiser held in the Virgin Islands in July. Mr. Meeks's campaign later reimbursed the organizers of the event $3,591 for the cost of food and beverages, according to the campaign's financial disclosures....
... The Stanford Financial Group also donated $10,000 in July to the Congressional Baseball Game, an annual event with proceeds donated to charity, according to lobbying records.
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